News
Wall Street & Washington
June 9, 2010
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| Maybe Yale finance professor, author, and former presidential advisor (there's more credits but bandwidth is precious) Jeffrey Garten should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque. Instead he brought sobering news as keynote at the Fort Worth Chamber's Annual Meeting Tuesday at the Worthington Renaissance in downtown Fort Worth at the Intersection of Wall Street and Washington. Jeff says the antagonism between the markets and government will slowly grow worse because markets don't know what the government is going to do. He doesn't think the government has the capacity to take tough measures to pare down the debts and deficits. | |
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| Prediction: more market volatility and financial regulatory legislation passed before July 4th. “Washington has become big government, and I don't see how it will stop,†Jeff says. “Wall Street consists of bigger and more concentrated institutions. We need that, but we also need other strata that deals with the entrepreneurs and the communities.†Job development and speeding up financing for small businesses at financial institutions and community banks should be a priority, Jeff says. | |
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| The Chamber also presented the Spirit of Enterprise Award to DFW International Airport. (No truth to the rumor it was 15 minutes late, then made us sit in our seats for three hours before speaking.) The award is given to companies that have made big contributions to community development. “DFW has sparked tremendous growth since it opened in 1974,†says DFW CEO Jeff Fegan. “It's the undisputed driver of the DFW community . . . we've achieved more under the joint leadership of the two cities (imagine that, Dallas AND Fort Worth, together) than we could have working individually.†As the third busiest airport, DFW provides service from 18 commercial airlines, including seven international carriers and is the highest capacity commercial airport in the world, with seven active runways and the ability to land four aircraft simultaneously. |
